Chester legend Grenville Millington has spoken of his pride after raising £7,250 for the cash-strapped Blues.

The former Chester City goalkeeper, who has also served as chairman of City Fans United, the supporters’ group that owns Chester FC, joined forces with former Blues director Ed Jones and Mike Cartwright to complete a 13-mile fundraising walk from Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground to the Swansway Chester Stadium, ahead of last week’s National League encounter with Leyton Orient.

The initial aim to raise £1,000 was surpassed well before the first steps were even taken down Chester Road and efforts swelled substantially during the day with a bucket collection at the game raising a ‘phenomenal’ £2,272, plus donations of over £260 raised on the night by travelling Orient fans.

The efforts of Jones, Millington and Cartwright have helped take Chester’s fund past the £90,000 mark, with a new target of £150,000 being set by the CFU Board at a meeting on Monday night, having initially needed £50,000 to stay afloat.

“We set an initial target of £1,000 and we thought if we can raise that, then it only leaves the club with £49,000 to remain in business,” said Millington, who lives in Drury and also played for Wrexham.

“It’s just snowballed really. We’ve ended up collecting £7,250 and the club are aiming to now raise £150,000 so I’d like to think we’ve done our bit in helping this great club on it’s way back.

“The response from the fans has been superb. With last week’s fundraising it sounds like we’re closing in on £100,000, which is just incredible given the fundraising only started five weeks ago.

“It shows you people don’t want to lose their football club in Chester. People say it’s not a football city, but I don’t subscribe to that. It’s a football city, just with a lot of Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United fans. But none of them want to see their local team go out of business again.”

Millington explained how fans had stopped the trio during the day and was ‘blown away’ the generous donations people made, before being paraded at half-time in front of the Deva crowd.

“We set off from Wrexham at 1.30pm and we kept on at a decent pace. We got to the Red Lion in Handbridge where we stopped off because they were one of the pubs who sponsored us. We met Gary Talbot in there too and had a drink with him because he’s been extremely helpful and generous in his time and effort.

“We took over £150 from people just stopping us on the walk. One lad came up to us on the walk into Chester and gave us 30p – he said it was all the money he had. That was one of the nicest donations we had.

“The response when we got to the ground was quite phenomenal. We took £2,272 in just over two hours. They were queuing up to greet us and put money into the buckets when we came out at half-time.

“One fan came up to us and said he thought we must be hungry so he put a few quid in the bucket and a steak and kidney pie!

“Ed had quite bad toothache on the day but he soldiered on for the cause. He’d been working in the morning, was going to the dentist the following morning and then work again, so it shows you the efforts Ed has gone to to raise this sort of money for our club.

“Alan Tarbuck also helped us out greatly in coming out in support and helping with our stall.”